


of dreams, ice and scales

by janonny



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dragon Tony Stark, Dragons, Fairy Tale Elements, M/M, POV Third Person Omniscient, Selkie elements, Sleeping Beauty Elements, Where canon meets dragons and sleeping beauty folktales and selkie myths, here there be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 02:07:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20734481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janonny/pseuds/janonny
Summary: Tony is Iron Man. He’s also a dragon who has learned that you can’t keep everything you love.Steve is Captain America. He’s also a knight who falls into deep sleep for decades and wakes to a different world.Together, they rescue each other.-At nine, Tony trembles when Maria comes to him and says with hushed urgency, “Never give your scales to anyone. You’ll only regret it.”At sixteen, Steve trembles when they lower Sarah into a hole in the ground.





	of dreams, ice and scales

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to [Coaster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coaster) for beta-reading and helping me bang this story into shape with all her feedback and great suggestions! I don’t know where this story would be without her help, probably still languishing on my computer. 
> 
> Heads up, this story is written in third person omniscient POV.

Maria spends her life with her face to the sky. If she’s indoors, she drifts towards the nearest window, her face turned to the blue sky outside like she hears it calling to her. In a posed photograph outside the Stark mansion, Maria has her arm locked companionably with Howard, but her eyes aren’t focused on the photographer. Her chin is tilted up, her eyes to the clear sky beyond. 

-

There’s a video of Tony’s hatching. It’s a slow and boring progress that Tony fast-forwards through when he watches it. Hairline cracks appear on the egg, and then nothing happens for several hours. A little mewling cry starts on and off during the time, until finally, the egg starts shaking more vigorously at around hour six. The commotion continues until a little piece of shell breaks off, and then another, until the egg is suddenly a quarter way broken. 

Movement stops again for another hour. 

It really is a very boring show. 

A little hand lashes out occasionally from within the egg, until finally, after several tedious hours, the egg shell has fallen out enough for a little weird looking baby to poke its head out and wail like a demanding monster. 

It really is a weird looking baby, but that probably applies to all babies. It looks all wrinkly, squishy and pink-faced, soft-skinned and kind of boring. Except the part where the baby came out from a large egg. 

Maria is there the whole time, drifting from the open window to the egg, and back again. She never tries to break open the egg shell, never helps to lift him out of the egg. Every time there’s a sharper than normal cry, she’s back by the hatching egg. During the quiet moments, she seems drawn haplessly to the window and what lies outside. 

When she’s beside the egg, her face is open with worry and anxiety until the little fragile baby finally crawls out from the half-shattered shell, crying and wailing in the most despondent way, like the baby has only been out in the world for all of ten seconds but it’s a terrible disappointment already. The moment he’s out, she scoops him up and her face breaks out in the most beautiful, happy smile as she peers down at the little creature in her arms. Any worry lines and stress on her face smoothes away until there’s only pure delight. She turns to the camera, beaming. 

“Stop taking notes and come hold your baby, Howard,” she tells someone behind the camera. 

“Yeah, just, hold on a bit. I have to take a sample…” Howard’s voice drifts out, and a hand is collecting the egg shell. 

In the video, Maria rolls her eyes and approaches the camera. Now there’s no one in the frame of the video, but their voices can still be clearly heard. 

“Woah, okay, wait, how do I—”

“Like this, just support his head, you’re doing fine.”

“Huh… Wow. He’s loud.”

“He’s a baby.” 

Howard eventually comes into frame with Maria by his side, and he’s staring down at the baby in fascination. “Will you look at that…” he says with wonder in his voice. 

Maria looks at them both with unadulterated fondness. 

In that moment, they are the happiest Tony has ever seen them. 

He never sees this version of them in person. 

-

Sarah spends her life with her eyes firmly cast downwards. She isn’t cowed or broken by life, but she’s a practical woman and she doesn’t believe in flights of fancy. She needs to keep her eyes on the ground, to watch where she steps, to be sure that she makes no mistake that they can so ill afford. When she has her most precious gift, she only has eyes for him, cradled in his arms. Even after years have passed, she’s always looking down at her too small child, who smiles up at her like he’s sunshine come to life. 

-

In all of Steve’s fairytales, there’s always a knight and a princess. There’s always a knight and a dragon. There’s a quest for the knight where he has to right the wrongs in his kingdom, where he has to protect the weak from the bullies, where he has to defeat the villains. 

Steve loves those stories, but sometimes he feels bad for the dragon that they kill. When he tells Sarah that, she laughs and kisses him on his hair, tells him that he’s a smart boy and sometimes, dragons can’t help their nature. 

Steve spends most of his childhood drawing and reading, because his frail body can’t do much more than that. He pushes and pushes, goes out and runs wild as much as he can. Then his body betrays him and he’s laid up in bed, coughing and tired, unable to leave. 

His mother touches his forehead, strokes his hair back, and tells him to be patient. She tells him that one day, he’ll grow out of this, that he’ll be the knight in all his stories and he will save the day. 

Most days, Steve smiles at her. 

Even if most days, he doesn’t believe her. 

But that isn’t going to stop him from trying. Because it’s the right thing to do. 

So when he’s resting in bed, he draws with charcoal sticks on ragged paper, sketching knights and dragons fighting, sometimes knights saving princesses. He draws his mom a lot as well, her hair pulled back tightly, the kind lines on her face when she smiles, those careful hands that cup his cheek. 

When he reads instead of draws, he reads about fantasylands far away, filled with brave knights and fantastical dragons and sweet princesses. He dreams about living in a place like that. 

But when he opens his eyes and sees his mom’s sweet smile turned on him, he knows contentment. He knows it’s okay not to have all that, because he has her. 

-

Tony isn’t enough. 

He isn’t enough for his father, whose attention shifts from his family to his work. He learns that a good man and a good patriot doesn’t always make a good father. 

He isn’t enough for his mother, whose attention shifts more firmly to the skies. He learns that a good woman and a good dragon doesn’t always make a good mother. 

When he turns five years old, he learns his father and his mother aren’t enough for each other. 

His first robot dog clutched in a chubby hand, he walks excitedly to the doorway of his father’s study to find his mother going through the drawers, hair in disarray as tears drip from her wide dark eyes. Tony hides behind the door frame, peering in.

“You said you would stay. You said you wanted a family with me,” Howard says, sharp and angry. 

“You don’t know how it’s like,” Maria pleas, frantic as she searches his study with increasing desperation. “Where is it, Howard? Give it back to me, please, I need…”

“You gave it to _me_,” Howard insists and catches her by an arm. “You said you wanted to stay with me.”

Maria pushes him away with a strength that belies her small frame. “And you said you wanted me to stay, but you’re at your work everyday, _everyday_, and almost every night. Why do you even want me here when you don’t see me?”

Howard shakes his head and snaps viciously, “Don’t put this on me. You’ve only had eyes for the sky right from the start. You’ve had one foot out the door the moment we married. You told me you wanted to stay, you gave me your scales.”

“I was wrong,” she snarls out, cutting him off with a slice of her hand through the air. 

“What about Tony?” Howard asks with vicious sharpness. “Are you going to abandon him too?”

That seems to pull her up short. 

“Tony… Oh, Tony...” she whispers, before burying her face in her hands as she cries.

“I’m keeping your scales for our sake. Don’t you see? Let this sky madness pass, don’t you want to stay together for our family?” Howard pleads with her, drawing her close. She lets him pull her into an embrace. 

Tony stays mostly hidden behind the door frame. 

His mother doesn’t leave that day. But he knows, they aren’t enough for each other. And he isn’t enough for them.

Tears welling in his eyes, Tony stumbles back out with his robot dog in hand. He looks down at the little gleaming pup and thinks, “This will have to be enough.”

-

Steve isn’t enough. 

His body isn’t enough for what he wants to do. His strength isn’t enough for every game he misses out, every injustice he wants to fight. 

It’s a struggle everyday with the body he’s given, as his mind pushes beyond his physical limitations. He doesn’t ever let that stop him. He doesn’t ever stop pushing and trying and fighting, because he doesn’t know how to give up. 

When Steve turns eight years old, he finds someone who will help make up for his shortcomings. 

“Leave her alone,” he says, drawing the attention of the much larger boy who was trying to steal the girl’s toy. She scampers away when the boy turns towards him instead. 

“Or what?” the bully sneers, laughing when he catches sight of Steve. “What are you going to do about it?”

“I’ll stop you,” Steve says, when what he means is that he’s already stopped the bully. Because the girl has already run off, so Steve’s goal has been achieved. He just hasn’t factored in a way to get himself out of the tight spot too. 

But that’s okay. Steve has learned to take his wins where he can. It doesn’t matter how hurt he gets, he can’t help himself. Something always drives him to protect the weaker, to fight off the bullies and monsters, to do _something_.

The boy beats him, but Steve doesn’t ever stop trying to hit back, to bite and kick and fight with all his failing strength. He knows he’ll lose, he knows he’s going to be beaten black and blue, but that doesn’t give him a moment of hesitation. 

Except…

Someone pulls the bully away and socks the boy in the chin so hard that the boy stumbles back and falls to his ass. 

“Get out of here,” the new dark haired boy tells the bully, aiming a threatening kick in his direction. 

Shaken, the bully scrambles back and runs off. 

“I don’t need your help,” Steve spits out, because he might not be enough for the world, but that isn’t going to stop him from making his own way in it. 

The dark haired boy looks at him and rolls his eyes. He bends forward and offers Steve a hand, saying, “Yeah, well, you’re getting it anyway, punk.”

Steve looks at that outstretched hand. 

His body isn’t enough for everything he wants to do, but that doesn’t matter anyway. He’s going to make it work, and maybe, it’ll be easier with a friend there too. After all, even knights have company sometimes.

He clasps the hand in return and lets himself be pulled to his feet. 

-

At nine, Tony trembles when Maria comes to him and says with hushed urgency, “Never give your scales to anyone. You’ll only regret it.” Her voice is forceful, like this is the most important advice she’ll ever impart onto him.

She has tears in her eyes when she cups his cheeks, when she presses kisses to his forehead and his hair, as if memorizing the feel of him for the last time. 

He has tears in his eyes when he says, “Mama, take me with you.” His voice shakes, tremulous, because he knows she can’t. He says it because he’s desperate, and he wants so badly for her to take him with her, but he knows she can’t. 

“My darling,” she weeps. “You don’t have your wings yet. And I can’t stay any longer. The sky calls to me.”

And what he hears is that no matter how much she loves him, she doesn’t love him as much as she loves the sky. What he understands is that he can’t hold her here, not even for a few more years, when she could be in the sky this very second. 

He doesn’t know where Maria found her scales. Howard never returned it to her, for he storms and rages later when he comes home to find her gone. 

Tony only knows that he will never see his mother again, as he watches her draw a cloak of glittering dark gold scales over her shoulders. She changes between heartbeats from a human woman to a gigantic golden dragon on the lawn and she beats her wings, hard and strong enough to send a gale of wind that almost knocks Tony to the ground. 

Then she disappears into the night sky, not a look cast back, like a golden star that winks out of existence in the endless stretch of midnight blue. 

Tony knows, as he’s known since he was five, that people will always leave him, because they don’t love him enough to stay. 

-

At sixteen, Steve trembles when they lower Sarah into a hole in the ground. 

Not Sarah. Because Sarah is gone now. Sarah had been there when they were in the hospital, when he had held her hand at her bedside. Sarah had still been there when she whispered to him, “My dear boy, I wish I could see where life takes you,” and then later, in a hoarse whisper, “I love you so much, Steve.” 

Sarah had been there until her hand had gone limp under his own. Whatever it was that made her who she was had disappeared from one breath to the next when her eyes had closed. When Steve thinks about the slackness of her face, the stillness of her chest, he knows that what is being buried beside his father’s grave is not Sarah. 

His mother left him in that hospital bed, long before the grave was dug. 

Bucky comes to find him afterwards, offers him a place to stay with the easy generosity that his best friend has. But Steve says no, says he can make his own way, because the Barnes family lives in a tiny flat, with barely any room for their family, let alone one more person to take up space there. Steve doesn’t want to be a burden to them. 

Not like the burden he was to his mother for so long. 

She had never made him feel that way, _never_, not even for a minute. But Steve felt it anyway when he saw the other healthy children around him. 

Steve misses her already. He aches just thinking about how her bright spark had winked out of existence, just like that, and that he can never see her again. 

He knows then that loving someone doesn’t mean you can always save them. He knows that no matter how much someone loves you, it doesn’t mean they can always stay. 

-

Tony’s transformation happens in a cave in Afghanistan. 

If it isn’t for the video of his hatching, he would think that he imagined his mother’s departure on dragon wings, because he has no hint of his dragon heritage for the decades that he’s been alive. His father doesn’t mention Maria or dragons ever again, silent on the topic to an ignoble end in a car crash. No one who ever mentions Maria seems to be aware that she had been anything other than a normal human woman, her only claim to fame being the abrupt way she left her family. 

Dragons exist, the world knows that, but they are so rare and hard to find that many believe they are extinct while some skeptics believe that perhaps they have always been a myth, with the few remaining footage being doctored videos.

Tony doesn’t think the video of his hatching, which has remained a secret, is faked. 

For the longest time, he decides that his human heritage must be the dominant gene and he has inherited nothing from his mother beyond his unusual birth. He waves off his sometimes sharp impulses to hold what he likes close, to keep everything he has within his reach at all times. After all, it could just be a normal trait shared by greedy billionaires around the world. It didn’t matter anyway since he squashed all of those urges. 

He learned his lesson well from his childhood. He wasn’t enough to keep what and who he loved. It’s best not to hold any too dear, no matter what his thrumming instincts say. 

Then Afghanistan happens. 

He doesn’t turn into a fire-breathing dragon and slaughter his way to freedom, although that would have been highly convenient. 

Tony has never turned into a full dragon and he never wants to, not if it means hearing the call of the sky and leaving everything behind for some stratospheric height. So he doesn’t start in Afghanistan. Even if he wanted to, he doesn’t honestly know how. 

No, instead, he almost dies in the cave, only saved by a kind, steady doctor, worth ten times more than Tony’s miserable life. 

The transformation Tony experiences is internal, as he wakes up to the reality of his so-far useless life, as he wonders about the legacy he leaves behind, as he watches Yinsen bleed away into the sand. He thinks about the people he’s pushed away, about the life he’s only half-lived. 

The transformation is internal, except for the small little red scale that he finds on his neck once he’s safely back on American soil. 

-

Steve’s transformation starts when a kind and steady man looks him in the eye and gives him a chance, when Doctor Erskine looks at Steve’s skinny sickly body and sees beyond that. His transformation begins when Doctor Erskine assesses him and judges: “This is enough.”

Like the knights of old, Steve goes on a quest to prove himself. Time and time again, Steve overcomes obstacles and proves himself worthy to all the skeptical eyes, proves that his courage and mind is more than enough to make up for his lacking body. 

There is no one left standing who could complete the quest but him. 

It’s like it was meant to be. 

But like all rewards for a quest well-done, there are pitfalls to avoid. The night before his transformation, Erskine takes him aside and tells him, “You must avoid the cold.”

Steve frowns, confused. “The cold...what?”

“Extremely cold temperatures. It’s not known what it will do to you, after your transformation,” Erskine explains. “There are some properties with the superserum that we don’t fully understand.”

It’s confusing and Steve doesn’t pay enough attention to the warning. His thoughts are on the future, on what is to come. 

Steve’s transformation continues in a basement, encased in steel, as he screams and screams in pain, as his body is ravaged and destroyed and rebuilt. When he steps out, he’s the successful result of a mad science experiment. 

He’s taller, so much taller, that he has to look down to meet people’s gaze. For the first time in his life, he doesn’t struggle to breathe, doesn’t feel aches in his joints. He feels...strong. 

His transformation is finished by blood and death, as the man who gave him this new life falls to betrayal. Even with all the strength that he has now, Steve can’t save him, and that is his other bitter lesson to learn.

-

There are more scales on Tony’s neck now, mostly a brilliant red, some edged with gleaming burnished gold as well. He can’t be sure because he only saw Maria once in her dragon form, but he thought the gold on his scales matched hers. 

When his suit of armor is complete, he gives it a red and gold paint job. It seems fitting.

He’s a dragon by birth, but he has had enough of just being greedy and redolent, accumulating wealth and ignoring accrued death. It’s time for a change. 

He puts on his red and gold armor, puts on his metal suit, and chooses to be a knight instead, to fight battles and right wrongs. 

And so as the dragon becomes the knight, Tony Stark becomes Iron Man.

-

Steve wears red, white and blue now. He wears it to help where he can, since he can’t help where he wants to. He sells bonds and is the laughing stock on stage. 

When he smashes into that prison alone, his red, white and blues are blemished by dirt, but he saves Bucky anyway. 

He becomes Captain America for real. 

But there’s only so many times he can triumph against all odds. He screams as he watches his best friend fall into snow and shadows. 

He has no more strength to scream as he defeats the Red Skull but still has a plane full of bombs on a plane set for New York. 

There’s only one way to save the city. And that way is down. 

It’s cold where he goes and he vaguely recalls a warning Erskine once gave him, something about the cold. The cold had been a warning clause in his near-magical transformation. But it’s too late now. 

Steve Rogers, in his red, white and blues, falls into deep sleep. 

-

Here is where the story really begins. 

Once upon a time, there was a dragon who dreamed often about a knight encased in ice.

He dreams of water and winter, of a pale face with golden hair and lashes that cast sweet crescents on smooth skin. 

He dreams of knights rescuing princesses from cold lifeless palaces. He dreams of dragons and sometimes he’s fighting the dragon, and sometimes he befriends the dragon. 

When he awakes, he thinks, “That’s pretty fucked up,” because he’s a dragon. Is this internalized dragon-hate? But what’s with the befriending dragon part?

And is the sleeping face the knight in shining armor? He looks handsome enough to be any knight from fables long ago, but knights don’t tend to be sleeping. The sleeping knight bears some resemblance to the pictures Tony had seen of Captain America, so he wonders if it’s some warped way his mind had seized on his childish hero worship. 

The dreams are a constant throughout his life, but he doesn’t mind them. Dreaming of ice and frozen knights seem preferable to dreaming about the ceaseless call from the skies that his mom used to describe. He’s never experienced the sky-longing, but perhaps that’s only because he hasn’t experienced transforming into a full dragon yet, which his mom had always said would happen eventually. 

Given a choice, he would rather he never experiences a full shift into a dragon. He would rather have full control of his decisions rather than to be owned by the skies. 

In comparison, dreams about ice and a sleeping knight seem almost peaceful.

He doesn’t dream of it every night. But every so often, he wakes up with memories of a chill on his skin and of knights saving princesses in faraway lands. 

As a child, it gives him a minor obsession in King Arthur and his knights, and he devours any book he finds on those. 

As an adult, he wonders if maybe the dreams started after reading all those books and it’s the way his mind is trying to try to fend off dreams of the skies, a subconscious attempt to ground himself in human myths and fairytales instead.

He doesn’t know this, or perhaps he’s just in denial, but he’s been having these dreams since he was a baby, long before he could read well enough to grasp King Arthur. 

-

One day, Tony is awakened from yet another cold dream about a sleeping knight by a phone call from Nick Fury. Usually, he would never get out of bed for a summons from S.H.I.E.L.D., but in this case, the subject matter is too exciting to ignore. 

Captain America. 

And he’s alive. 

After Maria left, Howard had obsessed over finding Captain America’s body and now it has been found, which is a miracle in itself. Except Captain America is apparently alive, which is even more impossible. 

But despite his reported survival, there’s something wrong with Captain America. Fury doesn’t go into detail over the phone, only requests that Tony come in and examine the ancient man. 

It’s peculiar that Tony is summoned, because unless the supersoldier is actually a super robot, then human sickness is well outside of Tony’s scope of expertise. He can only conclude that this might have to do with the superserum that had been irradiated with Howard’s machine. Perhaps they need Tony to weigh in on some machine or other. 

In less than an hour, he finds himself standing in an observation room, next to the room where one Captain America lies, unconscious but not dead. Tony looks through a glass window, not able to see much beyond the profile of a man who was lost to the world for 70 years. 

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Fury says, sounding not at all like he means it. In fact, he sounds a little bit peevish, like he isn’t quite happy that Captain America would dare disturb his worldview like this by having the audacity to still be alive after so many decades. 

“That’s one potential word for the situation,” Tony muses. “‘Zombie apocalypse’ is another option.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time we’ve dealt with one,” Coulson says amiably. 

Tony gives him a sharp look before turning to Fury. “Tell me he’s joking.”

He gets an answer from Coulson instead, in the form of, “S.H.I.E.L.D. agents don’t joke, Mister Stark.”

“Some of our scientists theorize that the superserum has kept him alive and unconscious, but even after we’ve tried to thaw him out, his body temperature remains low,” Fury says, ignoring the byplay. “They think the superserum is doing this, keeping him in some sort of stasis and that if we irradiate him with gamma rays again, it might kickstart his superserum and wake him up.”

So Tony was right, they do want him for his ability to build. He thinks it sounds like a load of horseshit but playing along will at least get him what he wants first. 

“Let me examine him, then we can talk,” Tony says. 

It isn’t a strange request since they want him to rebuild a one-of-a-kind machine to irradiate Captain America. They probably think he needs to take measurements to factor in for height and weight so as not to kill Captain America instead. 

Tony’s interest goes a little beyond that. The profile...there is something about it. 

Tony needs to be in that room, not behind a glass wall. 

-

When Tony walks into the room, he only has eyes for the sleeping face, the peaceful visage. It’s unmistakable when he can look upon Captain America’s face straight-on. 

He looks different from the photos Howard had kept of him, with his eyes closed like this.

He looks exactly the same as the knight from Tony’s dreams. 

Tony muses softly, “Less a knight and more a captain. Or would that be a princess...”

It’s as if speaking the words put silly thoughts straight into his mind, because Tony is suddenly swamped by the conviction that in this case, Steve Rogers is neither a knight or a princess. He’s both all at once, and he needs rescuing from the curse of untested science experiments. 

Well, Tony is a scientist through and through. It’ll definitely take one to salvage a messed up science experiment. And he flies around in an armored suit, so arguably, he’s a knight too. It’s almost like fate that he’s here.

The mixed metaphors are giving him a headache.

Tony places a hand on Cap’s wrist. It’s not like he knows how to take a pulse, but he feels this is the right thing to do around someone who is unconscious. 

Cap’s skin feels like an ice block under his fingertips. It seems impossible that Captain America could be alive when so cold, but the painfully slow, steady beeping of his heart monitor makes it difficult to deny. 

Suddenly, Tony feels something different beneath his fingertips. It’s not a pulse of any sort, but instead, he senses…

...warmth. 

He knows it’s not from the ice cold skin. It’s not sluggish blood in veins or the almost frozen cells. Instead, it’s warmth from somewhere deep inside this frozen sleeping princess-knight, a warmth that calls to Tony.

All of a sudden, Tony knows how to wake Steve Rogers. And it won’t be through more radiation or any scientific method. 

He knows the way to wake the sleeping captain like he always knows where the wind blows, like he feels the itch of the scales on his neck, like he can sense any fire within 100 yards of him. 

He knows what needs to be done.

A sleeping myth needs to be awoken by a waking one. 

Tony summons the fire in his heart, the flames that he cannot yet use in full but is always present in his veins. He summons them forth until they dance in his throat, flickers in his mouth. He cannot expel fire, not yet, but when he bends down and presses his lips to Cap’s, when he parts his cold still lips, he can feel the heat, the soothing warmth in his breath pass into the Captain’s mouth.

He pulls back immediately and for a moment, he feels very, very silly. What is he doing? Is he going to be arrested for some form of non-consensual somnophilia? 

But beneath his fingertips, he feels the ice thaw. Warmth spreads, and once-blue stiff lips are now petal soft and pink. Color seeps through the icy grayness of pallid skin, giving it warmth and _life_. Even the stiff blond hair seems to soften, to settle on healthy skin. 

Fury and Coulson barge into the room, shouting, but it doesn’t matter. The dragon’s heat has done its magic. 

Blue eyes blink open and the sleeping knight awakens. 

-

Steve doesn’t know it yet, but all the shouting that happens as he sits in his bed is par for the course when Tony is involved. 

Tony himself is blasé about the yelling because this tends to happen when he goes with his usual approach of asking for forgiveness instead of permission. Not that he apologizes for any of this. 

As he points out, “I woke your precious Captain America up, why are you complaining?”

Steve doesn’t fail to notice the sarcasm on the word ‘precious’ there. 

Coulson glares at Tony. “Because you didn’t ask, so we couldn’t give our approval, for you to wake him up...like this.”

“And we don’t even know if what you did woke him up,” Fury points out with a speculative look between Tony and Steve. “For all we know, you decided to give Captain America a kiss and he woke up just by sheer coincidence.”

Steve isn’t sure how he feels about this knowledge, that he was kissed by this admittedly handsome man with soft dark hair and meticulously groomed facial hair, who has lively eyes that watch Steve through dark lashes. He was introduced to everyone in the room, but that was just 15 minutes ago and names aren’t enough to lessen his confusion. 

“It was clearly true love’s kiss that woke the sleeping princess. Right out of a fairytale,” Tony says with a smug grin, unrepentant in the face of Fury and Coulson’s ire. 

Tony’s words strikes Steve to the core, because it echoes of events and stories from all the fairytales he loved to read as a child. Not able to stand being talked about like he isn’t actually there, Steve swings his legs off the bed and says with some vehemence, “I don’t even know you other than your name being Tony.”

“Clearly you don’t need to know me for true love’s kiss to work,” Tony quips. 

“It’s probably less likely to work if I did know you,” Steve bites back, just tired of these whimsical jokes at his expense when he feels so lost and confused. “I don’t care how I woke up. Can someone tell me what happened? Where am I? Did I stop the bombs? Is the war over?”

All three men suddenly unite in the face of these questions. They exchange meaningful looks. 

Tony pulls out his shades and slides them on. “I think that’s my cue to leave. You guys wanted Captain America awake, Captain America is awake. Give me a bigger challenge next time.”

Then he swans out the door. 

Neither have a good impression of each other that first day. Tony thinks Steve seems rather like a dim-witted ungrateful asshole while Steve thinks that Tony seems rather like a callous patronizing asshole. 

It’s a rocky start.

-

So the knight in red armor wakes the sleeping princess from icy cursed sleep, and all is well again. 

Except the princess is less a princess and more a knight himself.

And the knight is more like a flaming dragon.

And all is most certainly not well again. 

Tony thinks that fairytales and stories about knights are much less charming in real life. The knight is a dragon, the princess is a captain knight, and they argue and fight and are utterly useless together in a flying ship in the sky while gods fight their petty battles on Earth. 

They lose good men and women that day. The fragile attempts at putting together a campaign of champions fracture apart at a whisper from a silver tongue. 

But at the threat to the world, they finally band together and move as one. 

For a bright shining moment, they see each other’s worth, recognize the true mantle beneath the bristling anger and hurt feelings. 

Then the dragon is a shooting star in the sky, disappearing behind a portal. 

Then the knight is earthbound, only staring upwards, making the heartbreaking call to sacrifice one hero for the rest of the world. 

For a dark, hopeless moment, it doesn’t seem worth it. 

Then a red spark falls from the blue sky. 

-

They survive. 

They heal.

They still fight. Quite a lot actually. What the fairytales and myths never talk about are the difficulties and challenges faced when a princess-knight frozen in time has to learn how to interact with a dragon-knight with eyes cast only to the future. There’re clashes of culture, clashes due to history, clashes for the sake of clashes. 

The last probably happens the most. 

In time, the clashing turns into what Natasha calls “old married couple fights”, which Steve protests because they’re just disagreements, not fights, while Tony protests because they’re not _old_. 

Sometimes it goes like this, where Tony does something just to needle at Steve on purpose:

“Tony…”

“What, you don’t like it?”

“Sequins? Really, Tony?”

“Star Spangled Man, sequinned uniform, seems like a great match!”

“You know, J.A.R.V.I.S. likes me quite a lot. Maybe your next Iron Man suit can be in Hawkeye colors.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

And sometimes it goes like this, where Steve does something he knows will annoy Tony:

“Put your judgemental face aside.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Tony.”

“You _know_ what I’m talking about. I can see your judgement from right across the room. Breakfast is entirely an optional meal.”

“Maybe _you_ think you should be eating breakfast and are projecting that onto my expression.”

“Oh my god, who gave Captain America a pop psychology 101?”

“Or maybe I have resting judgemental face.”

“Okay, that’s actually funny. I don’t think that’s allowed. Someone call S.H.I.E.L.D. and tell Fury we got a defective version of Captain America. I didn’t ask for one with sass.”

With time, it somehow...works.

\- 

Tony invites Steve to stay in the tower. He invites everyone to stay in the tower, and they come, one by one. Steve thinks that it’s strange to have the knight be the one in the shining tower, all alone in a city of people. But he’s read the files now and he knows S.H.I.E.L.D.’s suspicions that Tony is more than human, so perhaps this is less like a knight taking the place of the princess, holed up in the tower, and more like a dragon, drawing in his treasures to the hoard. 

They learn to live together, to fight together.

The stories in dusty books never talk about the dragon who is manic from not sleeping for 36 hours and will chatter at you until he suddenly slumps over into a plate of food. No fairytales ever mentioned seeing the princess-knight with messy helmet-hair, grumpy because he hasn’t eaten enough for his accelerated metabolism. 

It’s hard to think about dragons, princesses and knights these days. For one thing, it’s so interchangeable. Who plays which role today? For another, they’ve seen each other exhausted after long missions, disgusting after being slimed by some sewage monster, snorting with laughter after a cooking experiment goes astray and there’s flour everywhere. The veneer of fairytale roles has rubbed clean off.

“Bring back a salted caramel donut from _Hole in the Wall_ on your way back,” Tony demands, imperiously.

For all that Tony teases Steve about being the sleeping princess waiting for rescue, Tony often comes across like the sulky royalty, making casual requests like it’s in his birthright. And maybe it is. But Steve is a princess if the myths are anything to go by, so he doesn’t give in easily.

“Go get your own,” he says as he shrugs into his jacket.

“But I don’t want to get up,” Tony complains.

Steve goes over to where Tony is slumped down on his couch. He puts out a hand and offers, “If you come with me, we can get a burger _and_ donuts.”

Eyes lit up, Tony takes his hand and pulls himself up, standing far too close and not close enough. “It’s a deal.”

It’s not so hard figuring out what dragons want after all.

On quiet days, Steve sometimes visits the workshop, spends long afternoons there. He draws in a corner, banters with Tony, and tries not to stare sometimes. It’s hard not to linger too long on Tony’s handsome features, especially when those dark lashes and bright eyes are touched with blue light from his many holographic projections. It’s hard not to stare as those dexterous hands dance through the air like a conductor directing light, to see those long fingers tap at a flat keyboard that is unreadable to all but one person. He tries to draw and paint this, over and over again, hiding all his results from Tony, but what he renders on paper and canvas is never good enough, not as beautiful, missing a crucial spark. 

While Steve spends so much time trying not to be caught staring, he completely misses the long looks Tony cast him from beneath his lashes. Tony can’t help comparing the handsome features of Steve Rogers to the sleeping figure that once haunted his dreams. The difference is astounding, how his steady blue gaze turns his classic good looks into something so much more. There is a life and intensity in him that cannot be matched in paltry drawings and photographs and dreams. 

Tony would like to see anyone try to resist Steve Rogers when he’s being charming, when he lets his defences down. There can’t be one person living who can turn away from Steve when he ducks his head and looks up with that almost flirtatious slow blink of his.

They both wax lyrical in their heart of hearts but they hold their secrets close to their chest instead of sharing it. After all, they’ve already had true love’s kiss, but no instant romance sprung out of the thin air at them. They believe they’ve squandered their one chance at this.

Instead, Steve says, “Let’s spar, Tony, it’s been more than a week since you trained,” and so they go for a frustrating but always invigorating session of grappling on the mats. 

Instead, Tony says, “Have you tried sushi yet? I’ve got a hankering,” and so they go out for lunch, filled with lively banter and full hearts, longing for more but both settling for what they think they can get. 

On and on it goes. 

No one ever filled in the tedious, day-to-day events of the fairytale. Nowadays, Steve and Tony would say that’s the best part of the story. 

-

Neither knight nor dragon stay bound to the tower. Sometimes, Steve goes away on missions with Natasha and Clint, quiet work for S.H.I.E.L.D.. Sometimes, Tony visits one of his other homes in Malibu for a change in scenery or for work-related reasons.

It usually happens without anything of note occurring, so of course, Tony has to change things up by giving out his home address to a terrorist. Before Steve can even call to question his intelligence, Tony’s house is sinking to the bottom of the ocean. 

Steve stares at the news in horror, eyes wide. He doesn’t want to believe what he’s seeing. 

He can’t. 

He refuses to accept what it means.

Within minutes, the Avengers mobilize to fly to their comrade’s aid. 

Steve doesn’t know this yet, but Tony has unfortunately flown himself in a different direction altogether. The only reason why Steve isn’t kept completely in the dark is because Pepper is already at the site of destruction, having rushed from work when she saw what happened on the news. She keeps Steve abreast on what they discover as the Avengers travel from New York to Malibu.

No Tony Stark. 

No body either, so Steve holds on to the hope, ignores the news that talks about how the ocean current could have pulled a body anywhere. He can’t believe it. He refuses to.

His phone rings and Steve answers immediately, expecting it to be Miss Potts again.

Instead, it’s J.A.R.V.I.S.. “Captain Rogers, I wish to inform you that I have a message for you from Mister Stark. Would you like to hear it now?”

“Yes, thank you,” Steve says, the words rushed out.

Immediately, Tony’s voice fills his ear. “Surprise! I’m not dead! But I’m going to let the world think I am, because someone wants me dead so it’s better for them to think that I am. I don’t think we need the big guns for this one, so you and the A-team should just stay at the tower and chill. No, that was a bad one, not even that funny, pretend I didn’t say it. I just stole a poncho and now I’m getting out of the cold. Tell the kids good night and I’ll owe them a bedtime story. Bye!”

Steve closes his eyes as he is swamped with almost dizzying relief. 

Naturally, Steve doesn’t listen to any of Tony’s nonsense and they continue towards Tony’s once-beautiful, now-destroyed Malibu home. 

Their investigation is a long and winding journey, but they do eventually wind up in the same place as Tony, fighting an army of enhanced soldiers that explode, and with Tony’s own host of armored suits on his side. The fight is long and hard, but with the Avengers there, the fiery soldiers are eventually defeated. 

Steve remembers the heated touch of Tony’s lips upon his own as the first memory when he woke in the modern world. He doesn’t know how Tony looked at that time, but he knows it cannot be anything similar to the way these soldiers burn, an unnatural light in their eyes and hands, only bringing destruction and no salvation. 

Later, as they stand in the debris of the fight, Steve finds himself alone with Tony. Natasha and Clint are liaising with S.H.I.E.L.D. while Thor and Bruce are having a chat with J.A.R.V.I.S. in one of the remaining suits.

Steve turns to Tony, exasperation clear on his face. “Why didn’t you call for help?”

“I had it under control,” Tony says, then looks around at the shipyard that’s mostly on fire. “It could be worse!” he insists stubbornly. 

“It could be worse if we hadn’t been here. I just don’t understand. You know we would have come if you had just called.”

Goes unsaid is that they came anyway, even when Tony didn’t call. 

Tony shrugs, too tired to try his usual deflection. “I suppose...I’m just used to doing it on my own.”

And Steve understands this because he remembers being a kid telling Bucky he could have handled it when they first met, because that was just how things went back then.

“You’re not alone now,” Steve points out. 

Tony only murmurs, “For now,” as he gazes into a particularly large fire, not even realizing that Steve heard what he whispered into the night. 

For this was how Tony has lived most of his life. He _isn’t enough_. Tony might be a dragon, but he doesn’t let himself indulge in many draconic impulses. His home tends to be bare except for art and collections put there by Pepper, and he gives away his wealth without much care. The only thing Tony hoards are people and even then, he does it sparingly because he knows he isn’t enough to keep his treasured people with him. 

He expresses draconic possessiveness with his old friends, Rhodey and Pepper, calling them “my Rhodey and Pepper” when he isn’t paying attention. He’s proud and protective of his bots, the ones he created and own without a doubt. But that’s as far as he goes. 

Tony gathers his team in the same tower like a dragon keeping his treasures in one easily defensible stronghold, but he doesn’t try to keep them there. He doesn’t treat them like his, doesn’t fuss over them, instead he spends most of his time holed up in his workshop instead. 

All of this is suddenly as clear as day to Steve, in a moment of clarity. 

“For as long as you’ll have us,” Steve says on a sudden impulse, surprising Tony who startles and looks at him with wide eyes. 

Steve carefully meets his gaze, not shying away from the clear disbelief. After a moment, Tony blinks slowly and looks away again, putting his hands into his pockets looking for all the world like he’s surveying a particularly boring office instead of a burning site of their recent fight.

“You know, I dreamt of you,” Tony says, as casually as possible. “Not recently, but before you woke. While you were in the ice.”

It’s Tony’s attempt to deflect, but Steve allows it, knowing there’s only so much heart-to-heart conversations either of them can tolerate in a day. He frowns. “How is that possible?”

“Some mystical nonsense I’m sure. I thought you looked like a knight, frozen in ice.”

“That wasn’t the impression I got about your view of me when I woke up,” Steve says a little wryly.

Tony waves his hand, like it’s of no consequence. “But then, turned out, you were the Sleeping Beauty, the princess waiting for a knight.”

Steve sighs and says, “Are you ever going to get tired of that joke?”

“But I think,” Tony continues, talking over him, “maybe you’re a knight after all. A knight in shining armor who just came to my rescue.”

He doesn’t look at Steve and it’s as close to a thank you that he can make himself give. In a moment of honesty, Tony abandons his usual flippancy for the rare unvarnished truth. 

Steve suddenly remembers the long ago tales that he used to read so avidly as a child, remembers the gentle hand on his forehead as he rambled about knights and quests. It feels fitting for Tony to frame it this way. 

“We’ll take turns,” Steve says with a smile, knocking on Tony’s metal armor to indicate his thoughts on this, and is pleased to see that tentative but warm smile touch Tony’s lips and eyes. 

-

“We need your help,” Steve says, and Tony is ready. 

Maybe in another universe, Steve would never ask for help. Maybe in another universe, Tony would never pick up the phone. But in this one, something has changed between them. They’ve agreed to take turns being the knight in shining armor, and it’s almost a game now, the back and forth life-saving. 

Steve doesn’t balk at calling Tony for help and Tony doesn’t hesitate to take a turn at it. 

So Tony goes to Steve and Natasha, helping them hide from the law. Thor is off-world and Clint is on a mission where he’s out of reach. While it would be good to have Bruce in a spare pocket, he doesn’t usually bode well for secret missions. With Tony’s money, evading the law isn’t remotely difficult. 

When they visit an old underground secret S.H.I.E.L.D. base, they listen as an ancient relic of a human turned into a computer program drone on about the bitter truth—that S.H.I.E.L.D. has been unknowingly sheltering Hydra within its ranks, allowing the serpent’s heads to multiply and grow. 

Zola speaks, an irritating nattering, “Hydra was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. What we did not realize, was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist. The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly. After the war, S.H.I.E.L.D. was founded and I was recruited. The new Hydra grew. A beautiful parasite inside S.H.I.E.L.D.. For seventy years, Hydra has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war. And when history did not cooperate, history was changed.”

“Could you get to the interesting part already?” Tony asks with feigned boredom. He feels rather than sees Steve loosen his muscles at the quip. 

“He always did like the sound of his own voice,” Steve says, forcing casualness. 

Natasha ponders aloud, injecting just a hint of pity in her voice, “He’s probably a little crazy after being stuck alone down here all these years. He really expects us to believe that no one in S.H.I.E.L.D. noticed the infiltration.”

Because Natasha is a brilliant spy and knows that interrogations don’t necessarily require thumbscrews and threats. Riling up a chatty mark works just as well, if not better. 

“S.H.I.E.L.D. missed a great deal,” Zola says in triumph, and the computer screen shows them news reports of Howard Stark’s death in a car accident, shows the recent death of Fury, along with a line about the Winter Soldier, their sight unseen assassin. “Hydra created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Once the purification process is complete, Hydra’s new world order will arise. We won, Captain. Your death amounts to the same as your life: a zero sum.

The moment the death of Howard Stark flashes on the screen, Tony _knows_. Steve grips his arm on one side, Natasha leans in closer on the other. They’ve understood as well. 

Hot anger and shame churns in Tony, because all this while, he has blamed Howard for drinking and driving, assumed Howard had brought his own death on himself and left Tony too young and unprepared as the heir to his kingdom. And now he knows the truth. All those angry thoughts and painful realizations that he will never get a chance to reconcile with Howard, he had heaped the blame all on Howard. 

But instead, the blame lies only with Hydra, with this mythical assassin called the Winter Soldier.

The anger and shame collapses and dies into ash, because all the regrets will not bring Howard back. He will pick out the embers to mull over in too lonely, silent nights. There’s time enough for self-recrimination then. He knows he would feel worse, burn hotter if Maria had been in the car as well. If Maria had died beside Howard by the hands of this shadowy organization. 

But Maria had left Tony a very long time ago. 

And if a shadowy assassin had tried to kill Maria, she probably would have eaten him whole. Dragons aren’t immortal but they are notoriously hard to kill after all. 

Then J.A.R.V.I.S. alerts them of incoming missiles and they realize this is just a ploy to delay them until the bombs hit the base. So they run once more. 

They pick up a new friend of Steve’s in the form of the Falcon. And then they discover that the Winter Soldier, possible killer of Howard Stark and Nick Fury, is Steve’s supposedly long dead best friend, Bucky Barnes. 

Another resurrection. 

Steve is blown away by this revelation. He floats in a haze, everything happening behind a thick layer of glass where all his emotions have been walled away. He’s numb with shock and the others try to keep going, look at him with worry but don’t push him to talk. 

Bucky isn’t dead. 

Bucky is still alive. 

Bucky is the Winter Soldier. 

On and on, these sentences repeat in his head. 

When it turns out that Fury isn’t dead after all, Steve is still too numb to react, just stares at Fury smirking at them all. 

Meanwhile, Tony is ready to throw up his hands in surrender. He might as well be surrounded by zombies. 

Project Insight is a nightmare that can take to the sky. It’s the stupidest idea Tony has ever heard before and he has to refrain from rolling his eyes several times over.

Fury says, “We need to breach those carriers and replace their targeting blades with our own.”

“One or two won't cut it. We need to link all three carriers for this to work, because if even one of those ships remains operational a whole lot of people are gonna die,” Maria adds.

Tony jumps in, something Fury says finally registering and drawing his attention away from Steve’s tightly-controlled face. “Wait, you’re replacing their targeting blades with your own? What’re your targets?”

“The helicarriers will shoot each other,” Fury replies. 

This time, Tony can’t help but roll his eyes. “That’s great and everything to ensure Shieldra doesn’t end up with massive flying weapons, but what are you going to do when the helicarriers are shot up and fall out from the sky? Send out a nicely worded apology when they crash into a building and thousands of people?”

“Do you have a better idea, Stark?” Maria asks with some irritation. 

Tony gestures at himself like his very presence should make the solution obvious. “We’ll still need to get to the targeting blades but I can render them inert without dropping parts of helicarriers from the sky onto innocent bystanders.”

Later, Steve says, “Thank you, Tony. I was just…There’s so much happening. It’s hard to keep track of everything.”

“It’s my turn after all,” Tony says with a shrug. 

That earns him a smile, the first he has seen all day from Steve. It’s small but no less bright for its sincerity. Tony feels a little shiver at the sight of that warm blue gaze and thinks, “_ Oh no. _”

-

Steve manages to replace the targeting blades for the last helicarrier. He knows Tony’s code will destroy the weapons inside the helicarriers, send power surges through specific parts of the weaponry until they’re useless hunks of metal. But something must have gone wrong when they were taking over this last helicarrier because an explosion of some sort shudders through the structure. The whole helicarrier lurches in the air and starts to list to the side.

He has no time to think about it, because Bucky is there, and Steve has to fight him. Again and again. But Steve is so tired, he’s so tired and he doesn’t want to fight Bucky anymore. He doesn’t want to keep fighting and cutting away pieces of himself. 

Steve remembers his bitter lessons from his youth. He remembers that that no matter how much you love someone, it doesn’t mean you can always save them. He remembers that no matter how much you fight for them, they can’t always stay. 

So he lets Bucky hit him, because it hurts less than hitting back, because hitting back doesn’t work. He lies there, and looks up at his best friend, and wills him to come back. 

“...to the end of the line…” Steve whispers as he watches Bucky’s eyes widen, sees the conflict playing out in his gray eyes. 

“That’s enough of that.” And suddenly, Bucky is slumping over, held up only by a red gauntlet clamped over his side. “It’s enough tranquilizer to take down an elephant, which probably means he’ll be out for only an hour.”

Steve looks up at his knight in literally shining armor and smiles. “Thanks for the assist.”

“Yeah, yeah. Someone has to keep an eye out on the suicidal lemming,” Tony grumbles and gives Steve a hand up. 

Then, Tony steps out of the armor, and the empty helmet shuts with no one inside. He stands there, looking strangely vulnerable in only a T-shirt and jeans. 

“What are you doing?” Steve asks, confounded and worried. 

“The helicarrier is going to crash,” Tony explains, which is actually more confusing for Steve. “I tried to bring the damaged engine online but nada. I’m going to have to do this the hard way.”

“What? And you won’t need the suit for that?” 

Tony shakes his head. “It’s not going to work with the suit on. And just in case I don’t succeed, you should get out of here with your BFF. J.A.R.V.I.S. can pilot the suit and carry you both.”

“I’m not leaving you behind,” Steve says with a sudden vehemence, his heart lurching at the thought of leaving Tony to face this alone. 

The words wind tight bands around Tony’s chest and he’s almost breathless with hope...which is pure stupidity because Steve is only talking about this moment, right here, right now. He’s not talking about forever. Tony knows he doesn’t get forever, not with anything or anyone he gets attached to. 

“You’re a stubborn idiot,” Tony sighs, trying to hide his surge of feelings behind exasperation. He taps on a panel on the Iron Man suit’s thigh, pulling out a strange glinting fabric from the hidden compartment. “I guess I”ll have to show you. J.A.R.V.I.S., you know what to do.”

“You can leave it to me, Sir,” replies J.A.R.V.I.S. through the Iron Man suit. 

“Thanks, J,” Tony says and then he shakes out the bundle in his hands. 

From a distance, it’s easy to mistake it as cloth. But up-close, it looks more like metal, but of the finest, most malleable sort. Tony looks down at the cloak made of fine gold-edged red scales, fluttering in the wind coming in from the open doors of the landing bay. 

Touching the scales, Tony feels a touch of nerves, an age old fear. He has never shown this cloak to anyone, has kept his mother’s word of warning close to his chest. 

All this time, he has avoided this. He has feared owning his whole heritage for fear of the sky, for fear of being beholden to it, and then for fear of knowing how it felt like to soar through the air in his scales only to be trapped away from it. He doesn’t want to do this, doesn’t want to become the shade of a creature Maria was at the end of her presence in his life. 

Steve looks lost. “What…?”

But Tony has no time for explanations, no time for second guesses. He just gives Steve a smile and says, “See you on the other side, Steve.”

He sweeps the cloak of scales over his shoulders and turns, running for the open door. Steve shouts after him, but he’s too injured to run, shot up and beaten as he is. 

For a heart-stopping moment, Steve can only stare with stomach-clenching horror as Tony flings himself out the open doors and over the nearest rail, cloak fluttering behind him. 

“_No_ , J.A.R.V.I.S., get him, _catch him_!” Steve shouts, terror in his voice. 

“Captain Rogers, Mister Stark does not require catching,” J.A.R.V.I.S. said, his voice almost gentle. 

Before Steve can say another word, before he can scream a useless order, a large...creature appears over the rail. 

A majestic head with gleaming gold eyes the size of a motorcycle each turns on a serpentine neck to look at Steve, as if asking why he’s still there. Glimpses of powerful red wings can be seen flapping almost lazily to stay on par with the sinking helicarrier. The gleaming red and gold scales on the creature matches the cloak Steve saw just a moment ago. 

Tony Stark is a _dragon._

It’s knowledge they already had, but it’s still a revelation that hits both of them at the same time. 

Steve takes it in with his own eyes the sight of this humongous dragon, trying to tie the vision of this large, flying creature with brilliant scales to his idea of Tony Stark.

Tony takes in the feel of the air beneath his wings, the first time his lizard eyes with their extra membrane for lids reveal a world even more vibrant with color. 

Angling his wings, Tony keeps pace with the tilting helicarrier and stares at Steve with a strangely delicate frown, as if to convey his confusion that Steve is only standing there, gaping. 

“We must go now, Sir,” J.A.R.V.I.S. says. “I have remote access to the helicarrier now and will shut down all engines soon. Mister Stark will put the helicarrier on his back and lower it into the water to lessen the potential damage to the city. It will not be an easy attempt as he is only slightly larger than the helicarrier, so it’s best if we evacuate as well.”

“Yes… That sounds like a good idea,” Steve says, a little dazed. 

And so, the knight-turned-dragon saves the princess-knight again. 

-

Something comes over Steve when he sees Tony next. He sees Tony in his human form, standing nonchalantly with hands in his pockets, scales nowhere in sight. His tousled, wind-swept hair might be the only hint that he hasn’t been in his armor the whole time. Hidden mostly between two ambulances, Tony looks out at the rush of paramedics and injured S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, his eyes turning amber bright and warm when they finally alight on Steve. Steve thinks, “_Oh no_.” 

But it’s too late now. He realizes it might have been too late for a very long time already.

Tony walks over and begins talking with a frown, “You should be in a hospital already, has anyone—” 

It’s entirely impulsive and rash when he sweeps Tony into his arms for a tight embrace, cutting off his worried words. 

“I thought you fell to your death,” Steve mumbles into Tony’s hair, reliving that moment of overwhelming fear. 

“I’m not the suicidal one letting other supersoldiers punch me to death,” Tony grumbles, but tentatively, oh so tentatively, embracing Steve back. 

They pull apart slightly, but their arms remain at each other’s shoulders. There’s something in Tony’s dark eyes that Steve thinks he recognizes. 

Perhaps this is the path they have been heading down all this while, with the type of start they’ve both shared. They draw closer together, lean in, until their lips touch, until the world around them ceases to exist because there’s only Steve and Tony with these welling emotions that can only be encompassed by their skin-on-skin contact. Swept away by how they feel together, they fall into the kiss, fall into the love that has been so softly growing within, embers stirred into a blazing conflagration. 

The kiss to wake Steve Rogers wasn’t true love’s kiss. The kiss they share in desperate surprise isn’t true love’s kiss either. 

But maybe...one day. 

-

There’s a cadence now to their lives together, entwined as it is. Sometimes, Steve spends too many hours thinking about his fairytales, about true love’s kiss. Sometimes, Tony remembers his mother’s words and thinks, "What if?"

Things don’t change as much as one would expect. The public doesn’t know it was Tony who turned into a dragon, especially when the Iron Man armor was seen exiting the helicarrier carrying Captain America and an unknown man. It’s a convenient alibi. 

Most people in S.H.I.E.L.D. Lite actually believe that the dragon was Fury’s true form. It seems appropriate if he’s a dragon. So for the most part, the Avengers are left to continue as normal. 

Bucky lives in the tower now as well, and he regains his memories slowly but surely, with Steve’s steady friendship. For awhile there, Bucky avoids Tony completely until Tony turns up on his floor of the tower one day and just talks to him like there’s nothing at all between them involving the Winter Soldier and Tony’s dad. Bucky takes his cue from that and behaves like nothing ever happened. 

Once Bucky is more settled with his newly discovered memories, Steve ends up spending a lot of time in Tony’s workshop. He jokingly calls it Tony’s lair and Tony is pleased by this monicker for his workshop. This is a new experience for Tony, being able to joke around with someone about his dragon form. 

It’s exciting and terrifying all at once. He has never let anyone in so close to him. He has never let himself hope so very hard that this person will stay and stay for him. 

But this time, Tony wants to try. And since he wants to try, Tony has to face the fact that he has shifted for the first time. Oh, the irony of taking a leap only to find himself caught in a net of his own making. 

But Steve deserves the truth, so Tony tells him, “I didn’t always have scales. But after Afghanistan, when I was in that cave, the scales started coming in on my skin. It was...really strange. It didn’t cover my whole body, but it covered my whole torso and even parts of my legs. You know that Natasha came to spy on me for Fury because they thought I was dying from palladium poisoning? Except dragons aren’t easily poisoned. Turns out, I was moulting and the first time feels a bit like death coming. The scales all came off in one piece. Pretty disgusting right?”

“That’s the cloak you wore,” Steve surmises. “I wouldn’t call it disgusting. It’s beautiful.”

“Flatterer. Anyway, that’s when I learned that we can achieve our dragon form after our first moult. If I put on my scales again, I turn into a dragon. I haven’t ever put it on before DC because...”

He breaks off into sudden quiet.

“Because?” Steve prompts softly. 

“I think...once you make a full dragon shift, you start longing for the sky. You want to fly and do nothing but fly,” Tony says, voice unsteady.

“Fly where?” Steve asks as he frowns, picking up on Tony’s fear. 

Tony shakes his head and looks away. “I don’t know. Just...fly away. That’s what dragons seem to do. They aren’t meant to stay on the ground, on earth. It’s what my mom did. She left because she couldn’t resist the call of the skies.”

There’s a short moment of silence before Steve reaches out and closes his hand around Tony’s wrist, grounding him. Steve asks quietly, “Do you want to go too?”

Tony looks up sharply, sees Steve’s sad blue gaze and it breaks his heart. He shakes his head and says, “I don’t want to go.” But he knows he can’t keep this from Steve, so he explains, “But...I don’t know if I can resist. Forever.”

Steve receives the words like a blow to his chest. It’s a physical hurt to know that Tony might not always choose to stay. He remembers a limp hand in his, sitting beside a hospital bed as his mother fades away. No matter how much someone loves you, it doesn’t mean they can stay. It’s a lesson that seems to repeat, over and over again in his life. 

Tony does not miss how he has caused this pain, with the way Steve’s eyes close and stay closed for a few dreadful seconds, before opening to reveal a shadowed blue gaze. It cracks Tony open and he wants to promise to stay, to swear he will. But he doesn’t know if that’s true. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

But Steve is steady as always in the face of painful news and he squeezes Tony’s wrist, trying to provide comfort. “It’s not your fault. You were avoiding a full shift because of this. You shifted to save the lives of many. You’re...you’re a hero, Tony. You always do the right thing even at the risk to yourself.”

Tony swallows against his suddenly dry throat and rasps out, “Right back at you.”

Smiling, Steve doesn’t bother denying it.

“How does it feel? The shift?” Steve asks instead, changing the subject clumsily. 

But Tony lets him, because the calling skies isn’t something they can solve now. He ponders and then answers, “It’s like I’m stretching, pulled in every way, but it also feels...right. The moment I put on my scales, it feels like there’s an ache in me that needs to be stretched away, and that’s what shifting is like. When I’m a dragon...the world is different. The sky especially is like the most precious jewel I’ve ever laid eyes on, the wind like coming home.”

There’s something about the way Tony talks about the sky that gives Steve a shiver. It’s a longing that also sounds like loss.

“Where does your arc reactor go?” Steve asks instead. 

Tony blinks out of his thoughts about blue skies and then, shrugs. “My dragon form doesn’t seem to need it.” He looks wry when he adds with an eye-roll. “_Magic_.”

Steve laughs at that.Of course magic irritates Tony, even when it’s his own.

-

Some nights, they come together in a violent clash, mouths biting and chasing, hands grasping and holding like this will be the last, like there is an end date fast approaching. 

There’s no rhyme and reason to when they’re clutched with worry, only an unspoken strange fear that surges forth at random. They lie together night after night, but it doesn’t ease the dread. 

Tony thinks about a cloak of red and gold scales, the call of the endless blue skies after he experienced the first full shift. Some days, when he lies in Steve’s arms, he can’t imagine why Maria was so easily tempted away by the sky. Some days, he stands at the windows and realises he’s lost hours to it. 

He wonders why now. Why when he finally decides he wants to keep Steve, wants to try with Steve, does he feel like Steve can’t keep him instead? Like the sky might have a prior claim on his scales and claws?

Steve thinks about a cloak of red and gold scales, wonders when he will see it on Tony’s skin again. When Tony is working away at his beautiful blue holographic projections, it feels like nothing has changed. But sometimes he finds Tony by the window, face lost as he stares outside and upwards. Steve calls him gently then, wakes him from open-eyed dreams about flight. Tony always goes to him, but they both carry the fear that one day... He might not. Steve knows now the story of Maria’s leaving, shared once in the throes of Tony’s own fears. 

Despite his fears, Steve never asks Tony to stay. 

But Tony wants him to. 

_ “Never give your scales to anyone. You’ll only regret it.” _

The last advice Maria had ever given Tony. 

And yet…

And yet, Tony comes to Steve one day, with a cloak of shimmering red and gold scales. 

“I want you to have them,” Tony says, voice calm, calm enough that he surprises himself. 

Steve looks at the cloak, lays his hand on the cool scales that are indestructible. Shivering at the sight of hands not his own on his scales, Tony can’t decide if he feels fear or titillation. 

“Why?” Steve asks, simply. 

“Because I don’t want to go. I don’t want to be tempted by the sky, I want to stay with you,” Tony confesses, the first confession of real emotion. “Take my scales and keep them where I can’t find them.”

And he feels a shiver run over his skin, thinks he hears something like an echo of voices, an echo of the same scene. Like this is life on a loop, repeating generation after generation. 

Maybe this is meant to be. Maybe fairytales and myths always play out the same way. 

Steve stares at the scales for a long time, his hands closing around the cloak like he’s ready to take it. Then he looks up and his blue eyes are sorrowful as he says, “No, Tony.”

It’s like a knife between the ribs, like the gasp of fresh air after being forced head first into a barrel of water. It feels like painful rejection and promised flight at the same time. 

“No?” Tony whispers, wondering if Steve doesn’t want him, doesn’t care if he stays. 

Steve can see the pain in Tony’s expressive face and he draws Tony nearer by his hands, the scales trapped between them. 

“For practical reasons. You might need the scales in a fight one day. I’m not going to take and hide away something that could save your life,” Steve says, implacable. 

The pain in Tony’s chest eases with this explanation. Steve is ever practical. “The man with the plan,” Tony murmurs. 

Steve gives him a flicker of a smile. “For personal reasons… Because I love you. And I don’t want you trapped here with me.”

Tony’s worthless heart trips in his chest at the words. Heat and happiness blooms at how Steve speaks of his feelings with no doubt in his voice and Tony is hapless to hide the small smile on his lips even as he shakes his head. “Steve, I’m giving you my scales. You’re not trapping me if I give them to you.”

“You’re not really staying for me if I have to hide your scales away. You’re staying because you can’t go,” Steve reminds him, gently. 

“Don’t you want me to stay?” Tony asks, plaintive, maybe a little unfair after Steve has confessed his feelings so plainly. 

“I want you to stay more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life,” Steve says, his eyes depthless pools of hope as they hold Tony’s gaze. “And I want you to choose to stay everyday we’re together, not because you can’t find the key to your prison jail door. I want you to love me and be free as you love me.”

And in that moment, Tony knows. Deep in his draconic, possessive heart, he knows. 

He’s found something better than flight, something he’ll hold near and treasure forever.

He draws Steve close and kisses him, kisses him long and true. When they part, he whispers, “I do love you. And I’ll love you everyday of my life.”

Steve smiles and smiles and holds him close. Because this was true love’s kiss. 

It wakes no sleeping knights frozen in ice, but it melts tightly held fears away from two entwined men, melts away past hurt and painful history, until all that is left is a future stretching out endlessly together. 

-

No matter how cold, Steve never falls into unnatural icy sleep again. 

No matter how blue, Tony never stands more than a minute looking at the sky again.

Stories of knights and dragons and princesses are fondly discussed and reminisced. But in the end, they start a new chapter and write their own story together. 

**The End**

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story that I’ve been looking to write for some time now. It’s my second dragon!Tony fic and that’s because originally, the first dragon!Tony fic was meant to have all the elements of a selkie myth too. But that didn’t work out at all so I planned to write a more fairytale-ish story with selkie-myth-applied-to-dragons and Steve as Sleeping Beauty. Then I decided to try omniscient POV. Lots of new stuff I’m trying here! Hope you enjoyed anyway! :)
> 
> If you like the story, you can also reblog it [here](https://awesomelifechoices.tumblr.com/post/187900640293/fic-of-dreams-ice-and-scales). Ta!
> 
> essouffle drew [this gorgeous piece of artwork](https://essouffle.tumblr.com/post/622183645356146688/stevetony-drawn-for-awesomelifechoices-for) based on one of the scenes in the story, at my request as part of a Marvel Trumps Hate auction I won! Thank you, essouffle!


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